Vehicles can be equipped to operate in both autonomous and occupant piloted mode. In either mode, one or more computing devices included in the vehicle can at least partly pilot the vehicle by sending commands to controllers to control propulsive torque, braking torque and steering. When a vehicle is in autonomous piloted mode, a computing device included in the vehicle can decouple the steering wheel from the steering gear to prevent undesired rotation of the steering wheel when the computing device rotates the steering gear as the computing device pilots the vehicle. The steering wheels and steering gear can be equipped to retain the true or absolute angular positions of each while decoupled to permit proper re-coupling of the steering wheel and steering gear when changing from autonomous mode to occupant-piloted mode.
Inexpensive components can be calibrated to provide true or absolute angular position for synchronizing the steering wheel and the steering gear, but without additional hardware and software, inexpensive components do not retain calibration information during a power loss. This mean that when the steering wheel and the steering gear are decoupled, if power is lost, for example by disconnecting a battery, or a dead battery, etc., inexpensive components can lose their calibration information and therefore cannot output true or absolute angular positions to the computing device to permit the computing device to synchronize the steering wheel and the steering gear angular positions in preparation for occupant-piloted mode.